handmade wardrobe

And now I’m 32.

July 3, 2016 Marie Leave a Comment

Today I turned 32. I feel older than that. I probably look older than that, to be honest. I have more gray hairs than I imagined I’d have at 32, and it gets worse by the week, and sometimes I worry I look like I’m mid 30s going on 60. Especially when I’m knitting in public. But eh, what are you going to do? The silver strands don’t take dye well at all, so even attempting to hide it just leaves me with some other color hair mixed with silver. So the only thing to do is just embrace it and hope that I can make natural grey look cute, I guess.

Anyway. 32. Most years I bake myself my own cake. This is a long-running tradition for me, and while it started out as a bit of a bitter project because no one got me cake… it has turned out to be a thing I very much enjoy doing. There’s something nice about making a special treat just for yourself, as a celebration of yourself and the one year older you became. This year, though, I took things a different direction. I had that new pie plate… and fresh raspberries in the yard… and we had nectarines in the fridge… Pie it is!
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The thing about pie, in this household, is that I’m the only one who eats it. (Well, the little Mr does, too, but he’s easy to hide it from). So literally there is no one else in this house that I have to share it with. My pie crust skills needs serious work, so it’s a bit messy, but OMG is it GOOD. Summer in a pie, right here. Maybe birthday pie is going to end up being the thing I do, instead of cake. After all, pie has fruit so it’s instantly healthy, right? No? Oh well. Worth a shot.

So after all the pie making, I spent today locked up in my craft room to sew. First up, I finished my sister’s wedding quilt (and I’m hoping my sister doesn’t know about this blog, or if she does she has sense enough to just avert her eyes and move on to another website so there aren’t spoilers… consider yourself warned, sis!)

wedding-quilt-detail wedding-quilt-finished

I’m so excited to have it finished! And… I kind of don’t want to give it away. It was a LOT of work. Do you see how small my sewing machine is? Do you know how hard it was to roll that quilt and get it shoved through that small hole so I could quilt it? SO. MUCH. WORK. But… I’m pretty sure I’m going to make another one so I can have one for myself. Different fabrics, of course, though I do love the black/white/gold combo so much. But, alas, without a gift quilt to gift I’d have to come up with something else and chances are slim to none that I’d get something made before Saturday. I decided to machine the binding, and I thought I might regret it but I don’t at all. It looks fine. It’s still handmade, regardless of how the binding is done. And it was way less stressful to machine it.

akita1

After the quilt was done, I decided I needed a new shirt. The thing with having a uniform for work is that I don’t need near as many clothes as I have. So I need a new shirt like I need another hole in the head… but I can make myself a new shirt to replace one of my commercially bought ones that is nearly worn out, so it’s a compromise. I’ve had this Akita pattern in my library since it was released, but never got around to it. The fabric is some mystery fabric I found for $1 at the Goodwill (score!) that was more than enough to make this shirt. I’m nearly done with it – all I have left to do is hem the bottom and sew on the neck binding. If all goes well, I’ll get it finished tomorrow morning and be able to wear it. It’s purely coincidence that it’s red and tomorrow is the 4th of July. I’m not exactly the most patriotic of people. Mostly, I just like the BBQs and the pie. :) But more on the shirt tomorrow when it’s done – I added a special little detail that I want tho tell you about when I have more time (and when birthday pie isn’t still lingering, begging for me to eat it).

Atwood, finished.

January 2, 2016 Marie Leave a Comment

atwood-finished1

Well, it’s done! It was all finished before the end of December, so it still counts as a holiday gift. All in all, knitting a sweater for the husband wasn’t a horrible undertaking, but in the future I’ll definitely choose my patterns a bit differently. Preferably the top-down variety that requires less seaming, plus the benefit of being able to have him try it on. The sleeves are a tad long, you see. But it’s done and waiting for him to wear it (at which point I’ll try to get a proper in-action photo – the lighting today really is pretty horrible so I had to make do with close by windows). I picked up buttons for it from Knitting Temptations, where I originally told myself I was going in for buttons only and then came home with 3 skeins of yarn plus buttons. Oops. I really am trying to go “cold sheep” (meaning no new yarn purchases) this year so at least those 3 came in on NYE?

So close

December 19, 2015 Marie Leave a Comment

knitting dye-runoff

After a long, emotionally exhausting week I can officially say that we are near the end of the husband’s Christmas sweater. I spent several hours on the road, going back and forth between home and the funeral home, and managed to get the bulk of the 2nd sleeve knit (don’t worry, the husband was driving). And then, yesterday, I spent the majority of my day standing and knitting in an attempt to finish the last portion. Because, of course, you can’t sit down and knit with a toddler – there’s apparently some unwritten rule in toddlerdom that if mama sits down that’s your sign to pester her. (Seriously, I’m kneeling at the computer right now rather than sitting in the chair because as soon as I do that his independent play is over.)

This morning I set about to washing each of the pieces and blocking them in hopes that I can spend Sunday stitching it all together and Monday-Wednesday working like crazy on the collar and button band to have it done in time for Friday. I’m not impressed with the amount of dye runoff that came out of the individual pieces. The yarn was the basic Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, so it wasn’t like I spent a ton of money on the yarn (wasn’t my choice, however – I offered to knit it in nicer wool but husband is cheap and insisted the cheaper yarn would be fine). I laid towels down on my bed to keep it from getting stained as well. Oh well. Next time I’ll persuade him to go with a nicer yarn. Either that, or I’ll just pick it out myself and not tell him what I bought or how much it cost.

The Mesa dress

October 21, 2015 Marie 1 Comment

Handmade wardrobe item number… I don’t even remember.

This is the Mesa dress I think I wrote about earlier this summer. I finished it a few weeks ago but couldn’t quite get the courage up to wear it until today. It felt, to me, like it looked handmade – my set in sleeves are kind of wonky on the seam and all. But I decided to finally take the plunge and wear it to work and everyone flipped out when they heard I made it. They couldn’t believe it! I even had several people ask if I’d make some to sell so they could buy one. So I’d say that’s an excellent finished garment :)

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

September 11, 2015 Marie Leave a Comment

Let’s pretend I didn’t set the camera up on the self timer to take these, okay? Let’s just go with the idea that I have someone following me around in the craft room taking my picture and that I didn’t at all have to run over to where I wanted to stand and wait for the picture to take, then run back over to make sure it looked okay or if I needed to take another and repeat the process more times than I’d like. PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!

My Dorothy apron is done. This one fits differently than the one I made before and I’m not sure why… seam allowances, maybe? I’m almost certain I didn’t pay attention to seam allowances in the past so that might be why the other one felt like a better fit on me. I’ll have to go dig it out of the kitchen closet and compare and see, I suppose. Maybe my body has just changed more than I realized post pregnancy.

Anyway. That photo of the pup and I just kind of happened. I kept trying to get pictures of me in the apron and they weren’t working out very well. I either looked awful, or the apron fabric needed fixed, or some other random thing about it was off. We don’t let the dog upstairs very often because she’s 13 with back issues but when I’m home alone I let her up with me if I’m going to be hiding in the craft room for a while. She just kind of jumped up on me to get my attention… and the snap has turned into my new favorite photo of us.

So onto the next project… the Wiksten tank dress. Yes, yes, THAT pattern again. This is probably going to be the last one I make for a little while because I would like to try out another pattern or two that I’ve purchased. I’m still working on that Mesa dress but just have hemming to do and I have to wait for my Amazon order to arrive and bring me the twin needle I need. So for now I’m using up more of the fabric I’ve recently purchased to make a dress version. It’s definitely a slower process than the last version. That brighter blue is sheer so I have to line the dress with some sheath fabric. which meant cutting the pattern twice, then stitching the layers for the fronts and backs together before I could begin stitching up the shoulders and sides. I have all of that done now, however, and just need to hem it all and apply the facing. I can’t decide if I should leave the curved hem, though, or just take it to my cutting mat and make it a straight cut. I think it’s a bit long, given that I’m only 5’2″, but I might wait until the husband gets home so I can ask his opinion first before I do anything.

I’ve had a very glorious kid-free day today, with taking the toddler to Nana’s and then coming back home to have time to myself. It’s been lovely. I’m not totally ready for it to end, however – I had this laundry list of things I wanted to work on today with my free time because I’m a huge over achiever and I’ve only gotten a fraction of it done. There’s still a bit of time, and there’s always after bedtime. But I have this really nasty habit of thinking everything I want to get done will take half (or a quarter) of the time it actually takes.